This guide from Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP(R)) covers safeguards that can be implemented in hospitality businesses today, tips on how to continuously improve security and data regulation compliance.

HFTP GDPR Guidelines: Privacy Policies for Hotels

This document offers points to consider in the development of a hotel’s privacy policy. In view of the multiple organisational and legal structures under which hotels operate, as well as the complexity of the third party landscape that may be part of the complete guest experience, this document serves as a guideline only.

HFTP GDPR Guidelines: Hospitality Guest Registration Cards

This document offers recommendations for guest information collection on the guest registration card along with consent for use. It can be used as a guideline for loyalty cards, health data, export of data outside of the EU, privacy policies and direct marketing.

It is estimated that 90% of the world's data was generated in the past two years, yet brands still are only using half of it. Everywhere you turn brands are claiming the status of data pioneer, hoping to be heard above the noise.With GDPR set to come into force in May, we will witness a dramatic change in the way businesses use data, and whilst it's useful to have an individual or team in charge of driving that change, it is far more important to change the mindset and structure of the business as a whole.The travel industry, in particular, will feel the full force of the introduction of GDPR, mainly due to the large amount of personal data it collects from consumers, ranging from home addresses to medical data.As the industry reels from a slew of negative PR stories from the latter half of 2017, from Monarch ceasing trading to Ryanair leaving passengers stranded, it is more vital than ever that they are fully prepared for the upcoming regulations. However, this cannot be the responsibility of a single data officer.

Google has seen the number of user-initiated searches for travel drop for several quarters, according to iProspect, a digital agency.The era of travelers beginning their travel-related search by "Googling" may have hit a plateau. If so, what's next for travel marketers?"Native advertising" is one potential option. Facebook, for instance, has built a revenue stream off of native ads, which show up in news feeds on the social network looking much the same as status updates from one's friends.Google has faced the challenge of how to apply the native ad format to the open and mobile web, where there are dozens of variations of screen size and display type.Up until now, a brand marketer wanting to run a native ad campaign via DoubleClick, the digital marketing company owned by Google, needed to spend a lot of time creating variations in the creative that could display in different formats, as needed.

Search engines, OTAs, review sites, metas and other tools have changed the way travellers look and book rooms. But revenue management has remained the same during my fifteen years working in the business.We are still so caught up in managing rates, availability, inventory and occupancies on a daily basis that there are a lot of opportunities that are being missed, so caught up in a department-driven processes that we are losing focus on critical changes happening in the world around us.

What can we expect from work, play and life in general in a 100 years is the subject of a report from Samsung SmartThings. The Future Living Report predicts three areas which might impact our leisure time in a century and it notes, we're likely to have more down time with advances in technology (virtual meetings from home etc.) making for a shorter working week.

As we reach 2016, Tnooz is unveiling its customary series of reflections on the year behind us and what the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry might expect looking ahead. And, as always, we've asked friends and family of Tnooz to help us out. Here is part nine of our 12-section bonanza - shifts in hotel digital marketing.

London, UK-focused home sharing service Vive Unique will become Veeve following Smedvig Capital injection of $5.2 million. The Series A investment comes 18 months after an initial $5.2 million was put into the high-end business, also from Smedvig Capital. The company says since it launched ahead in 2011, ahead of the London Olympics, over 1,000 property owners have signed up to the service. The total overall portfolio is claimed to be worth of over $1.5 billion.

MyRoomIn is a Paris-based startup that's built a luxury hotel booking platform. In a twist, MyRoomIn presents only a few rooms in each of the hotels they tout. It also claims that travelers will get the exact room that they select in the booking process. In another twist, unlike other such search engines, it enables people to select from more than 125 search criteria, such as free wifi, specific room sizes, and gluten-free dining options. The site launched last month with listings in Paris. It plans to add London and Rome hotels by year-end. The company has raised Euro 800,000 in seed funding, led by the Impala Group.

An increasing number of property management system and door lock hardware providers offer software to enable mobile check-in and smartphone room keys. But they do not build guest-facing mobile apps, which creates a "mobile white space" in the hotel IT ecosystem. Today's "silent travelers" want to manage their entire stay from their mobile device: from booking and check-in to room selection, mobile room key and mobile concierge services. The hotels that move to fill this mobile white space set the standard that travelers will come to expect from the entire industry. - See more at: http://www.tnooz.com/article/hotels-fill-your-mobile-white-space/#sthash.89hv638N.dpuf

India's online travel market continues to evolve, with an entirely new sector having emerged over the past year or so - online aggregated budget accommodation providers. The premise is simple and includes elements of the franchise model which dominated the hotel industry, particularly in the US, before the internet came along. Indian budget hotel owners can rebrand their properties, commit to providing a standard level of service and allow distribution to be managed centrally.

That's especially true today with the plethora of sites offering a bewildering array of hotels and apparent deals. But while consumers may enjoy greater choice about where to stay and how to book, hoteliers are pinning their hopes on the fact that trends in the hotel space often follow the airline sector, where many consumers now choose to book direct. Brian Hicks, InterContinental Hotel Group's (IHG) VP Revenue Management for Europe & AMEA, for one, thinks the case for booking direct is getting stronger. Reading the papers suggests that he may be right. The Guardian recently published an article which argued that the "best rate guarantees" of the likes of Booking.com, Expedia and Rentalcars.com, as well as TripAdvisor's "just for you" offers, "are barely worth the pixels they are written on". The Mail Online followed up only last weekend saying, "Hotel guests are being fleeced by online agents". Another plus for hoteliers is that EyeforTravel's latest The Future of Metasearch report finds that while brand loyalty is less common, hotels have a much stronger link to the consumer than airlines do.

No, Amazon is not creating a travel brand to compete with the Expedias of this world, a spokesperson has said. But today its sub-brand Amazon Local has added some modest improvements to how it markets, on any given day, around 300 hotels in the US and about 150 in the UK. It has added a Destinations tab (via the new amazon.com/destinations) to the top of selected Amazon Local pages for Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle. The landing page gives a much bolder treatment of travel than Amazon Local has before, with fly-out windows and larger imagery.

Booking.com says it will support changes put on it by regulators to amend hotel price agreements. The Priceline Group-owned accommodation booking giant will "abandon its price, availability and booking parity provisions with respect to other online travel agencies". The decision comes after recent pressure and rulings from regulatory bodies in Sweden, France and Italy.

ByHours is a website that lets travelers book rooms in three-hour increments. A year ago, the Spanish startup raised $3.6 million. In 2014, ByHours processed 150,000 transactions. In Spain, hotels have earned 5,5MEUR by selling rooms by the hour through it, according to the company. Now the Barcelona-based startup plans to become a broader marketplace that sells not only hotel rooms but also meeting rooms, cars, and gym access by the hour.

Last October, Accor Hotels unveiled its five-year, 225 million euro plan for "reinventing the customer experience through technology." For an update, Tnooz spoke with a few key officials on its tech side. A focus for the company is mobile, according to Jean Luc Chretien Executive vice president, distribution sales and loyalty, who says: "Today about 35% of the users of Accor's digital platforms are arriving by mobile devices.

Airbnb will start collecting taxes from property owners in Amsterdam, following complaints from hoteliers in the city. In an agreement signed between the home sharing pioneer and city officials, Airbnb hosts will pay a tourist tax which will then be passed on to the authorities. Local hotels had previously complained how some hosts were not collecting the standard tourist tax from guests, in the same way that hotels, hostels and B&Bs did with their own customers.

Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed two new data-led features on stage from the annual Expedia Partner Event in Las Vegas: a live travel ticker and real-time hotel reviews. The other big feature that relies on Expedia's data and user behavior firehose is a live travel ticker. Essentially, it replicates a news or stock ticker at the bottom of the screen and keeps users updated on the latest pricing and availability of interesting travel products.

Tnooz sat with Priceline Group CEO Darren Huston to discuss all things Priceline, including the thought process on buying OpenTable, moving into brand.com hotel software, and becoming (or not) an enterprise software company. This last bit is especially interesting, as both SAP and Oracle have shown considerable appetites for entering the travel vertical with purchasing other enterprise-level offerings. Could Priceline's recent systems and distribution acquisitions signal a desire to compete as a broader, more horizontal enterprise software company?

I live and breathe internet marketing. I don't have any hidden powers or know something that is not already public knowledge. I just like to ponder and hypothesize what the future might be, identifying trends from my unique perspective and offering up thoughtful solutions. The digital marketing space is quickly evolving and it's critical for travel businesses to stay abreast of trends in order to stay in the game. Here I offer up seven top trends I see coming and my recommendations for addressing each.

Each year, Google publishes a travel study that shares key insights about US traveler shopping behavior. This year's report, the 2014 Traveler's Road to Decision, has yet to be published on its market research website Think with Google. A spokesperson says the study will appear there soon. In the meantime, Tnooz has obtained a copy. The report has some eye-opening findings that could help digital marketers plan their campaigns and help travel companies allocate their spending more optimally. The poll spotlights a declining use of mobile apps as a starting point for travel planning and booking. It also notes that nearly half of US travelers now use multiple devices to research and book a single trip.

Anyone looking at the mergers and acquisitions of the past year would know that there is something in the air. Big, brand-name firms have been jockeying to acquire technology companies that provide business-to-business (B2B) services for hotels. To name some deals: Priceline acquired direct-booking marketer Buuteeq. Then it snapped up management platform Hotel Ninjas. Oracle bought Micros, whose systems are used by 30,000 hotels. Amadeus spent $500 million on hotel specialist Newmarket International. -

Priceline built its business in 1998 on opaque bookings, or buyer-driven pricing. But the supply of opaque deals appears to be shrinking for it and all players in the industry, according to Tnooz interviews. But a survey of bids shows the steepest discounts are still available on Priceline. Increasingly difficult market There's no authoritative market research on the total market for opaque or semi-opaque bookings, let alone anyone tracking a relative decline.

The Priceline Group boosted its gross bookings during the first quarter to $12.3 billion, a 34% year-over-year rise. The US-based travel comparison conglomerate boosted its spending on marketing offline and online in its effort to fend off rivals including Google, Expedia, and Skyscanner. The company said its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the quarter was $513 million, an increase of 39% over a year ago.

Room Key, a US-based hotel booking engine, recently turned two years old. We wanted to check in for an update from the company, which is owned by Choice Hotels, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Wyndham and Marriott. We spoke by phone with CEO John F. Davis III. On a scale of 1 to 10, how successful has Room Key been? By what yardstick? I'm pleased. We've doubled our conversion rate since launch. The hotel chain shareholders are pleased, too. They like the amount of bookings they're getting out of Room Key. We're not profitable yet, because we're reinvesting in the product for future growth. The shareholders are okay with that.

What is the travelling public's perception of travel reviews? Are they valuable or gamed to death? Or still a vital cog in the machinery of a purchase? The Worms University of Applied Sciences has pulled together research on reliance on review sites, how credible they are considered and what consumers like to see. The study from the institution's Department of Tourism reveals more than half of hotel customers always consult review site before booking. Of the 1,021 internet users surveyed, about 17% say review sites are essential to booking, 31% say important and 48% say important but recognise the need to handle with care.

As we all know, Google entered the hotel metasearch game with the introduction of Google Hotel Price Ads (HPA) in a number of Google products. These included Google Hotel Finder, Google Maps, Google+ Local and Google Search on desktop, tablet and, increasingly, mobile devices. According to Google: "Hotel Price Ads is a feature that assists users who are researching travel by surfacing hotel rates and availability across Google properties". So why it is important for you? In a recent Google partner event during ITB Berlin, Nicola Simionato, Google's general manager for travel in EMEA & APAC, explained why Google introduced HPA.